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The Court of Cassation will issue a verdict on 13 February on the appeals submitted by Habib al-Adly, the former interior minister, Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister, challenging earlier respective sentences from the Cairo Criminal Court in July last year.

On 12 July 2011, the Cairo Criminal Court convicted Nazif, Adly and former Finance Minister Yussef Boutros Ghali for directly contracting a German company to provide the country with car license plates for prices higher than local rates, which cost the state LE92 million in losses.

Adly’s lawyer, Farid al-Deeb, said Wednesday that the company that was contracted to supply the plates is the same that had supplied many other Arab countries, and that it offered the best price at the time.

The Cairo Criminal Court had sentenced Nazif to a suspended one-year prison sentence, Adly to five years in prison and Ghali in absentia to 10 years.

The court found the defendants guilty of squandering LE92 million in state funds by assigning the license plates for a German company by direct order, and for higher than the market prices.

The court also sentenced in absentia the legal representative of the German company to a one-year suspended prison sentence.